Plane over Death Valley National Park

Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

A pilot flies over a mountain pass and descends towards a dry lake bed named the Racetrack inside Death Valley National Park, CA. This is the same flight route that Sinaloa Cartel drug pilot John Ward described in a prison interview as using to reach the Racetrack. He made illegal landings here to delivery marijuana he smuggled across the border from Mexico.

A pilot flies over a mountain pass and descends towards a dry lake bed named the Racetrack inside Death Valley National Park, CA. This is the same flight route that Sinaloa Cartel drug pilot John Ward described in a prison interview as using to reach the Racetrack. He made illegal landings here to delivery marijuana he smuggled across the border from Mexico. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A pilot flies over a mountain pass and descends towards a dry lake bed named the Racetrack inside Death Valley National Park, CA. This is the same flight route that Sinaloa Cartel drug pilot John Ward described in a prison interview as using to reach the Racetrack. He made illegal landings here to delivery marijuana he smuggled across the border from Mexico.